The Google Pixelbook brings back the $1,000 Chrome OS halo device

Enlarge

SAN FRANCISCO—After a year of hibernation, Google's flagship Chromebook offering is back! At the company's hardware event in San Francisco today, Google announced the "Google Pixelbook," representing a new generation of Chrome OS device.

The Pixelbook is full of "firsts" for a Chrome OS laptop. It's the first Chromebook with a seventh-gen Intel Kaby Lake processor. It's the first Chromebook with the Google Assistant built-in, in the form of a hardware button and an "OK Google" hotword when the screen is turned on. And the Pixelbook is the first Chromebook with a pen: an optional $99 Active Electrostatic (AES) stylus called a "Pixelbook Pen."

Like the Chromebook Pixels, this is a premium Chromebook with a premium price tag: the Pixelbook starts at $999. That gets you a 12.3-inch 2400x1600 3:2 display with an Intel Kaby Lake Core i5, 8GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, and a backlit keyboard. You can upgrade to a 256GB SSD for $1,199, or you can jump up to a Core i7, 16GB of RAM, 512GB NVMe SSD config for $1,699.